That’s a huge waste of time, money, and resources. Many marketers mistakenly believe you can never have enough content. But it’s not about quantity as much as it’s about creating the right content for the buyer’s journey.

Let’s look at how you can do this and minimize squandering your marketing budget on idle content.

Start with a Buyer Persona

Before you develop content, judge how well it relates with your buyer persona. You have one, right? If not, I recommend this resource for defining your typical customer.

Once you complete a buyer persona, you should have a good sense of the challenges your customer faces in his or her business.

In the B2B world, this discovery process is generally easier than B2C because business people tend to have similar problems, such as the need to increase sales, boost productivity, and reduce costs.

Still, every sector can have its own set of unique challenges, and that’s why a buyer persona is so important. By outlining the specific problems of your customer, you can then assemble the right content he requires while traveling the path to your product.

The Three Stages of the Buyer’s Journey

You want to consider where your content should appear on the buyer’s journey.

This journey has three stages:

1) Awareness

At the starting line, your customer says, “I have a problem.” He investigates the issue and conducts research to discover all he can about it. During this early part of the journey, he may read content like white papers, research reports, and eBooks.

2) Consideration

Now your customer has reached the stage where he’s looking for solutions to his problem. At this point, he may attend webinars and view videos to educate himself on the solutions. But he’s still not searching for specific product info.

3) Decision

Progressing from the consideration stage, your customer looks for the products that meet his solution criteria. He is now focused on more product-specific content, such as brochures, data sheets, case studies, and demo videos.

Since your customer will compare your product to competitors, emphasize in decision stage content why your product is the best solution.

Don’t get hung up on content formats. They’re less important than the content itself, so it’s okay to have format overlaps in the different stages.

Content Audit – Why You Need to Know What You Have

Before you launch any new content initiatives, audit all your current assets. This takes some effort, but it’s a better use of your energy than creating content that’s never consumed by potential customers.

Create a list of your available content with a brief description of each.

To save time, you can download mycontent audit template. It has fields for the title, description, buyer’s journey stages, and comments.

What content do you have available that’s appropriate for each of the journey’s three stages? You’ll probably find imbalances. That’s okay, at least now you know.

When you have reviewed your current content, you may see opportunities to repurpose or combine pieces for various parts of each phase.

For example, you find several blog posts marked on your content audit template as appropriate for the Consideration stage. For your customer’s convenience, you might unite the posts in a single document as a special report pdf.

Again, quality is more important than quantity, but you want to ensure you thoroughly answer via your content the customer’s questions and concerns. Compare your audit to your buyer persona. How well does your content fulfill a customer’s needs as he makes the trip?

Conclusion

The buyer’s journey looks daunting for B2B marketers. But you don’t have to look at it that way. It’s just about delivering more focused content –valuable, actionable, and consumed. You’ll make mistakes, but at least, get the process started. Track response. Get feedback. And you’ll develop relevant content marketing that generates satisfaction for customers today and tomorrow.

Trade shows are still vital for B2B lead generation, even with the recentonslaught of marketing automation. And aside from a client meeting, they’re the best channel for delivering your content marketing into the right hands.

Until I researched the topic last week, I honestly thought the effectiveness of trade shows had faded.

I haven’t participated in an event since 2009, but I was curious to see the state of the industry. Here are a few stats that caught my eye:

92% of trade show attendees come to see and learn about what’s new in products and services

46% of trade show attendees are in executive or upper management

81% of trade show attendees have buying authority

The last statistic about the purchasing clout of attendees certainly reinforces a show’s value, and I have to admit I was surprised the buying power stat is over eighty percent.

What Content Should You Bring?

Determining what content to take to a trade show is not different from developing marketing for any other channel. It starts with the customer. Who will be attending the show from your target audience?

If you serve only a single business sector, then problem solved. However, if your business services multiple sectors, then only select white papers, case studies, videos and webinars that best fit the attendee’s niche, so he doesn’t have to waste time looking for content that’s relevant to him. Too much content can confuse and frustrate an attendee.

Do Product Brochures Still Matter?

Today, white papers and case studies occupy the spotlight in B2B content marketing. Do brochures have any role to play?

In fact, they’re a top choice among content assets when technology companies are considering a purchase. Have a look below at the results from the 2015 B2B Technology Content Survey.

Top results from the 2015 B2B Technology Content Survey.

Print vs. Digital

USB flash drives are a top promotional tool at trade shows.

Digital certainly has some advantages over print, but it makes its biggest impact only if you exploit digital’s main strength: interactivity.

While it’s unlikely they have the budget to add multimedia elements to every white paper, case study, and brochure, SMEs could likely afford to produce one interactive piece for a trade show.

My vote for a multimedia makeover would be the product brochure.

Why?

You can promote your product as dynamically as possible, and brochures are the document format of choice for displaying what you sell.

Audio and visuals in e-brochures are excellent substitutes for text and photos found in print brochures. On the other hand, white papers and case studies are text heavy and less visually oriented.

You can easily customize e-brochure content, so it’s relevant to the target audience attending the trade show.

Flash drives are a popular choice for content distribution at trade shows since USB ports are widely available.

On the downside, not every attendee feels comfortable inserting a USB drive into her computer due to security threats. To alleviate some of the anxiety, trade show experts recommend you don’t leave your supply of USB flash drives publicly accessible. Instead, you or your staff should personally give the flash to each attendee.

With all the bells and whistles you can add to electronic documents, should you even bother bringing print material?

Before making a decision, consider some of print’s advantages.

Whereas flash drives look the same, print documents can capture an attendee’s attention quickly with the content’s headline and graphics.

A study on reading comprehension published last year indicates printed text engages the brain more thoroughly. Researchers discovered:

“88% of respondents indicated that they understood, retained or used information better when they read print on paper compared to lower percentages (64% and less) when reading on electronic devices.”

“80% stated a clear preference for reading print on paper for complicated materials in contrast to only 13% preferring to read complicated materials on a computer screen. Mobiles and smartphones were preferred by only 3% for reading complicated materials.”

If you sell highly complex products, seriously assess what content might be better suited for print, such as data sheets and technical briefs.

QR Codes: Worth the Effort?

A trend among exhibitors over the last few years is printing quick response codes on their marketing documents.

Printed QR codes can direct attendees to a landing page or other online resource.

Unfortunately, there are drawbacks to this approach. Not everyone knows about QR codes.

Five years ago, they were hailed as the next big thing in marketing. However, their popularity never caught fire in North America, and their use seems to be on the decline. Attendees also need a QR code reader installed on their smartphone to engage with an exhibitor code.

If you decide to go QR, always develop an incentive for attendees to engage with your codes.

In an article published by EXHIBITOR magazine, live event experts Tim Patterson and Kristin Veach said there are two rules for QR code use:

Despite their expense, trade shows still offer B2B marketers key benefits in the 21st century, such as focused lead generation, personal access to decision makers, and promoting buzz about new products and services.

When it comes to developing and distributing content for trade shows, my best recommendation is not to complicate access to your content for attendees. The more steps they have to take, the less likely they are to view it.

Have you ever worked on a complex content project with a marketing team and one of the members said, “Oh, I thought you were going to take care of that”?
I heard it more than a few times early in my career.

It’s especially heart sinking to hear when you’re approaching a deadline, and the forgotten task is key to the content’s success.

This confusion happens because the project didn’t have a plan on who was responsible for each of the details.

Before I describe a content brief, let me answer my question about the need for a brief. No, not every piece content needs it because…well…it could be too brief. For example, a content plan for a blog entry might be overkill; it’s probably better to use an outline (see below). But for long content, a brief is ideal.

The difference between an outline and a brief

I define an outline as a planning document for an individual, such as a writer, designer, or project manager. It’s useful for simple, short content or

breaking down a large project into smaller chunks. But an outline is not for circulation to other team members.

A brief is more detailed. It specifies the purpose, format and audience, as well as the goals for the content produced. Unlike an outline, a brief is for distribution to all the content team, so each person knows his responsibilities.

What should a content brief contain?

The complexity of the content project will determine what you include in your brief.

At a minimum, a content brief should have the following information:

Team Leader: The person who is steering the project. This could be a project manager, marketing director, or even a contractor. This person should also be responsible for revising the brief if necessary. While the team leader may be evident to company employees, outside vendors and contractors may not know the person in charge. It’s good to include the team leader’s contact information for those outside the company.

Content Team: A list of the people (staff, contractors) involved in the content creation and production. As with the leader, include contact information for team members and who is responsible for what.

Title of Content: You’re completing this document at the start of a content project. At this point, it’s fine to use a placeholder title if you haven’t finalized the official name.

Description: A brief summary of the content and the form it will take (pdf, web page, video).

Main Objective: Establish what you want the customer to learn after consuming the content and the next step you want him to take.

Target Audience: Define whether this content is for customers, prospects, or both. Drill down further if you serve multiple markets and include a summary from relevant buyer personas that form the content’s primary audience.

Measurement: List methods to track the response to the content once it’s released.

Graphics: The photos and graphics used in the content, including file names. Don’t forget about additional graphics you may need for content promotion (see below).

(TIP: Freedigitalphotos.net has a nice variety of pictures. You can purchase them outright or give the photographer or designer credit free use).

Promotion: This activity doesn’t get enough attention from content producers. What’s the point of creating content if your audience never knows about it? List the methods you’ll employ to promote the content, such as a news release, an announcement on the company blog, and posts on social media channels.

Proofreading: Ideally, the team leader and one other person should proof the content before distribution (preferably not the writer, who has read the text too often to see it fresh). You may want to outsource this task to a professional proofreader. Be careful: getting too many people involved in the process can produce confusion.

Corporate / Legal Sign Off: Some content may require review by your company’s attorney or legal department. Be sure to keep your legal advisor in the loop on the content timeline. Ask how much time she requires reviewing content and include ample time to make any required revisions.

Deadline: Date of project completion. Not every project has a hard deadline to meet, but I believe it’s still better to list a particular date rather than a vague description like “early next month.” The latter slows momentum and distracts team members from completing project tasks.

Conclusion

After two decades in marketing, I have worked on projects with and without a content brief. I can tell you a brief delivers a smoother process for every person involved. It takes a bit of time to plug in the details, but a brief provides a host of benefits, including keeping your team focused, reducing miscommunication (and blame!) and achieving deadlines.

In fact, I can even save you time producing a brief. Copy and paste the categories above into Word and save. Now you have a content brief template for your next project.

Prospects are swimming in content today — from you and your competitors.

The flood of popularity for content marketing makes it harder each month to stand out from everyone else.

How do you avoid content commoditization? You can use a number of techniques to burn your light brighter than the competition and do it without significant expense. Most of the tips I suggest in this post don’t require much in upfront costs, just some additional time for brainstorming and production.

Let’s dig into the ways to add value to your content.

Make their job easier

In an average workday, prospects and customers have limited time to consume content. They often have a computer folder loaded with marketing material they need to read and evaluate. A vital method to differentiate your company is developing content that’s interactive or quickly absorbed.

While there’s nothing wrong with producing white papers and case studies, also create checklists, cheat sheets, and templates that can reduce and simplify a customer’s workload.

My favorite is templates. You can develop them as content calendars, customer questionnaires, buyer personas, and many other useful tools.

HubSpot produced a PowerPoint template that lets you add snappy graphics for your content sharing.Digital Marketer developed this swipe file of headlines for social media.At the end of a white paper for the heavy equipment market, this quick reference table delivers important load material info with an easy, at-a-glance format.

Where to next?

Your content marketing shouldn’t exist in a silo. If you have similar content that may benefit them, tell your prospects and customers where to find it. You often see this in books, with a Further Reading list. Or online articles, with hyperlinks to related topics.

If you create a SlideShare presentation, do you have additional info on the subject? Then include a link to it.

At the end of a SlideShare presentation, I included a link to my blog entry with more details on the topic.

Adjust your company biography to fit the content

When you read B2B marketing documents like white papers, you see at the end of each document a brief biography of the company that produced the content.

These bios contain the same text from one document to the next. They include information about years in business, products and services, and, if a public company, stock market information.

Sure, it’s easier to cut and paste this section into every document, but you’re wasting an opportunity to position your company. Instead, remind your prospects in the bio section how you solve problems discussed in content they’ve just consumed.

Create customized content

Before the Internet, you had few options to personalize marketing, other than writing your prospect’s name in the salutation of a letter.

The evolution of web analytics has gone far beyond names. It can now analyze a customer’s behavior on your website and other marketing channels, which allows you to develop content that is personal and relevant. In fact, Demand Metric reports, “78% of CMOs think custom content is the future of marketing.”

It may require extra time and resources from your marketing department, but personalization’s positive impact on ROI can pay for itself.

Your company’s reward is better engagement and increased revenue. For example, HubSpot remarks, “personalized calls-to-action result in a 42% higher conversion rate than calls-to-action that are the same for all visitors.”

Here’s another vital reason to personalize content. Google co-authored a study last year that revealed 46 percent of B2B buyers conducting research on future purchases are millennials. This generation expects content tailored to their specific needs and interests. They’re resistant to the mass communication model of marketing.

Conclusion

Even small changes to your content marketing can boost engagement and relevancy. With so much information racing through the Internet pipe every day, it requires nimbleness to adjust content so it distinguishes you from the competition.

Have you discovered other ways to make your content unique in your business sector? Please share them in the comments section.

So what do B2B companies get wrong when they charge into the marketing arena?

In this post, we’ll look at four of the frequent missteps we marketers make, including producing content we think customers want, relying only on inbound marketing, and why focusing too heavily on lead generation can be costly.

Also, you’ll discover the surprising statistic on how much cash companies allocate to their marketing departments.

Let’s start with the biggest blunder:

1) Never test and measure marketing campaigns

One of the biggest puzzles I find is what marketers say they want versus the action they take to achieve that want. Possibly the greatest contradiction is a majority of B2B marketers claim they wish to measure the response to their campaigns, but only one-third measure and calculate their return on investment. Even when they track their initiatives, a surprising number of marketing departments never share the information with the executive level.

Why aren’t marketers persistent on measurement activity?

Financial resources appear to be a prominent factor. Recent stats show nearly 70 percent of B2B organizations allot five percent or less of revenue on marketing.

Hmmm. This is troubling. I suspect it’s because of an enduring mindset that marketing is an expense and not an investment in driving growth.

This lack of tracking leaves marketers confused about what works and what doesn’t. When asked by Webmarketing123 which promotional channel was their primary revenue generator, 32 percent of B2B marketers answered, “Not sure.” Yikes!

2) Never try print marketing

Digital marketing is so pervasive that it seems to marketers as the only game in town. But print has advantages.

For one, there’s less of it than there used to be, so while your email competes with others for a customer’s attention, sending marketing material through snail mail helps you stand out from other companies.

Most companies post their white papers and case studies as pdfs on their website. Instead, why not carefully select a few high-quality prospects and send them a printed copy of your content marketing pieces?

Today’s printing technology has made it possible to create personalized marketing documents and produce in smaller quantities than previously available with traditional offset printing.

Print can deliver a good return on investment. The Direct Marketing Association conducted research that reveals that direct mail ROI outperforms digital marketing.

Studies also suggest you can boost the impact of your digital campaigns by including complementary direct mail. Research shows elevated open rates and increases in average sale orders than using online marketing alone.

In Direct Marketing News, Richard Rushing, senior director of digital strategy at agency Epsilon remarked, “Brands with a compelling message or offer that link direct mail and digital can expect a 10 to 30 percent uplift in conversion when combining the two channels.”

Here’s a new print approach to try. The website Minibuk lets you produce 3.5″ by 5″ booklets. They’re small enough to mail in a business envelope or carry easily for distribution at trade shows. Your booklet can contain text and graphics of a presentation, webinar, case study, special report or just about any other type of marketing content.

3) Too little focus on customer retention

You may have heard the business maxim that 80 percent of your company’s future revenue will come from just 20 percent of your existing customers. But is this true? Yes, according to research conducted by marketing firm Gartner Group. The statistic proves the importance of keeping your customers happy to prevent defection to your competitors.

However, as you can see on the B2B Marketer’s Accountability chart below, customer retention doesn’t get as much focus as lead generation. This stat is mystifying considering marketing to current customers is significantly cheaper than acquiring new customers. And according to Marketing Metrics, “The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 – 70%. The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%.”

Customer retention ranks near the bottom among B2B marketers in medium-size companies.

Even marketers give themselves poor grades in this area: 70 percent rated their retention activities as either “average, poor, or needs improvement.”

To boost retention, you should audit your current content marketing assets. As well as creating content for customers, look at what you have that you could repurpose. What could you use to upsell, cross-sell, or keep your company top of mind? How about sending customers case studies that introduce products and services they have yet to purchase?

A major mistake in content marketing is relying too heavily on what your competitors create. Unless you have a spy working in a competitor’s firm, you don’t know for sure which of their content is successful. While every industry has best practices, nothing beats testing the waters with your prospects before producing a load of content in a channel they don’t access.

Choosing the wrong marketing channel for distributing content can waste valuable time and resources.*

For example, buyers from diverse business sectors may have different preferences on content formats. A study published by Eccolo Media on B2B influencers and decision-makers in the tech sector revealed:

“More than half of respondents (57%) said they had looked at product brochures/data sheets from B2B technology vendors in the past six months, the most engagement with any content type.”

This may be surprising considering all the attention that digital marketing receives, but when you put tech prospects under the microscope, it makes sense. Where a consumer might rely on a friend’s product recommendation in a social media post, a technology buyer requires in-depth details datasheets provide, particularly if they need to ensure compatibility with current corporate systems.

Conclusion

Marketing is complex, more so than many people realize — even marketers. It has to appeal to both logic and emotions of your prospect and customers. That’s no easy task. For a B2B marketer, you have the added burden of trying to persuade both influencers and decision makers. You’re unlikely to hit the bull’s-eye every time.

Making mistakes shouldn’t embarrass you, as they’re crucial to helping you see what appeals to your target audience and what doesn’t. Mistakes can serve as the best marketing intelligence you could ever hope to uncover!

“… Infographics were the tactic that had the greatest increase in usage –from 51% last year to 62% this year,” says the Content Marketing Institute in their annual study B2B Content Marketing: 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends (North America).

The love affair between content marketers and infographics is still hot, and it doesn’t look to cool anytime soon. I understand the appeal of visual graphics, as they have a knack of keeping eyeballs glued to content.

Like any other type of content marketing, the reasons for creating infographics are varied. But can they be used for lead generation? I admit that they’ve never topped my list of lead development methods for clients. However, after seeing my share of this content format over the last few years, I realized there’s no reason you can’t develop infographics for lead generation. After all, B2B marketers could use the help, as 83% of them list customer acquisition as a vital objective.

Rethink your infographic to optimize for lead generation

A typical infographic reveals a lot about a particular topic, but it says little about the infographic creator. Sure, prospects may view, share, and like it, but few readers take any further steps to connect with the company that published it.

By keeping lead generation as your focus and applying some direct-response copywriting techniques to your infographic text, you can boost the chances of moving your prospect to the next step.

Here are five things to consider when optimizing an infographic for lead generation:

1) Topic related to your product or services – As far as customer acquisition is concerned, choose a topic that connects with your company’s product or services. Your reader still expects information of value so don’t try to sneak through a thinly disguised sales pitch.

Review your current marketing material. Could you develop an infographic from content that already exists? One good potential source is a white paper. You no doubt had to conduct considerable research into the white paper topic. With all that information, you may have a subject meaty enough for an infographic.

2) Create a compelling infographic title – Your prospect may see your title before the infographic itself, as the title could appear in a blog post, press release, or social media channel. While there’s no room here for an in-depth lesson on writing headlines, my best quick tip is to aim for specific and descriptive text that capture’s your prospect’s attention.

Recently, I came across an infographic titled: The Corporate Marketing and Sales Spend Landscape. The title gets to the point, but it’s bland. Under the title was this subheadline: What Percent of Revenue Do Publicly Traded Companies Spend on Marketing & Sales? The subhead grabs attention more than the title because it’s specific and framed as a question, which sparks curiosity.

3) Experiment with format – The main drawback of a “just the facts “infographic is it lacks a voice of influence — the text seems anonymous. Innovative marketers find ways to overcome this weakness. For example, marketing consultant and author Bob Bly develops Tipographics. Instead of publishing an assortment of facts, the tipographic includes actionable tips that you often find in articles and blog posts, which have a stronger narrative voice. So go ahead. Shake things up a bit and expand beyond the standard template for visual graphics.

4) Have a call-to-action – A well-constructed CTA is a hallmark of direct response marketing. Many companies that publish infographics drop generic boilerplate text near the bottom of the design with phrases like “brought to you by.” Or worse, they just slap on their corporate logo. You want to deliver a strong incentive for readers to visit your website. Could you tie the infographic topic to a complementary content asset such as a white paper, blog post, or podcast that adds more value to the information contained in the graphic?

5) Direct prospects to a specific URL – After the call-to-action text, include the exact URL where the reader can obtain additional information. For example, suppose your firm offers SEO as one of its services, and you create an infographic related to this topic. Include the URL for your SEO services page. Don’t just post your homepage URL and expect your reader to search your site for the information she wants.

Conclusion

Creating a good infographic for lead generation doesn’t take an enormous amount of effort, just a bit of forethought. By using a few tested methods from direct-response marketing, you can also tweak your current infographics to entice potential customers to engage with your company.

You may join a Group for a variety of reasons. Perhaps you enjoy interacting with colleagues, bouncing off ideas for feedback, or doing industry research. All valid reasons.

But if you’re using Groups to catch the attention of your target audience and generate new business, then you should periodically inspect the value of your Groups and decide whether to continue as a member.

I’m now in the habit of reviewing my LinkedIn Groups every few months. Last week I went on a pruning spree and dropped out of 20.

Here are 5 reasons why you might withdraw from a LinkedIn Group:

1) Too many vendors and not enough decision makers — Sadly, this is a problem with any networking, whether online or offline. You’ve got a high seller to buyer ratio. If you’re looking to connect with your target audience, how many of the members fit the profile of your ideal prospect? Click on the Members tab, enter the job title of your typical customer, and review the results.

2) The Group is a ghost town — Some LinkedIn groups start with the best of intentions but never get rolling. Like a bad headline, the Group fails to grab the attention of LinkedIn users. And even popular Groups can go bust for a number of reasons, such as competition from similar Groups, loss of interest by the Group manager, or an abundant supply of poor-quality posts. If the last post in the Group was a month ago, pack up your posts and move on.

3) The Group is overpopulated — Bigger is not necessarily better. Sure, there’s a heck of a lot more eyeballs scanning the posts, but they’re a lot more posts to scan. For example, I belonged to a Group that had nearly 1,000,000 members, but it also routinely published over a 100 posts in a single day. The lifecycle of your post is short in this kind of environment. If your posts are getting lost in the crowd, consider concentrating your efforts in smaller active Groups.

4) You never visit the Group —When I first joined LinkedIn, I was told by the “experts” that you should always max out your Group membership. (You can join up to 50.) However, I found it unwieldy and difficult to visit this many Groups on a regular basis.

5) Your posts never get posted — With some groups, your post is published immediately. In others, the Group manager reviews each post before approving. I joined a manufacturer’s Group because I had previously worked at a dealership that sold the manufacturer’s equipment. Even though I posted useful information related to the industry, my posts were never published. It could be the manager is not quick at approving posts, he or she is overwhelmed by the number of posts to review or has a bias against the topic of your post. If your posts consistently never see the light of day, you should concentrate your post activity elsewhere.

What about you? Have you withdrawn from a LinkedIn Group for a reason not listed? Please share why below.

In a recent survey, 52% of B2B tech buyers consumed a white paper before evaluating a technology purchase. It remains an important B2B marketing content format for both buyers and sellers.

But can you actually sell your product in a white paper? Not overtly. Mentioning your product upfront in a white paper violates the unwritten rule of sales-neutrality. Even though a white paper is a marketing document, the tone of the text is editorial rather than the more subjective tone of sales copy.

That said, using copywriting techniques can assist this content format. Even with its editorial style, a white paper still implements words and concepts that copywriters often apply in sales-oriented B2B communications, such as the benefits of saving money, boosting revenue, and increasing efficiency.

Of course subtly is vital, as B2B prospects are generally more suspect of the often slick, hyperbole heavy B2C copy. A good way to implement low-key copy in a white paper is to create curiosity and credibility among your target audience with questions, statistics, and industry concerns.

How One Business Launched this Approach into Action

Marketing services company Ion Interactive published a white paper called Beyond the Landing Page: An Introduction to Post-Click Marketing. On page one it proposes this challenge:

“The real question is: what happens after the click? Far too often, the answer is nothing. Even with the best of intentions, what happens after the click is seldom a consideration— and even less frequently a priority.”

The topic content addresses some of the issues marketers face in understanding more about the prospects that click, how to boost the quality of leads, and improve ad buys.

As it continues, the white paper reveals linear conversion paths are not always the best choice and suggests marketers: “Put up multiple versions of your path and see which ones convert the best.”

“Easier said than done,” is probably what many readers would be thinking at this point. Again, the paper cues up a likely problem for the prospect: He or she simply doesn’t have the time, resources, or skill set to take advantage of post-click marketing.

The answer to the problem comes next. In the final paragraph of the white paper, Ion positions its services as an easy way to take advantage of post click strategies:

Exact placement of company information in a white paper plays more importance than any other type of marketing communications. Ion has wisely placed its corporate information in the final paragraph, as it answers questions raised in the topic text.

As well as describing its services, Ion backs the copy with a case study on post-click marketing and conveniently includes it at the end of the white paper rather than as a separate pdf.

White papers and case studies don’t have to be separate documents. Ion supports its white paper by adding a case study at the end of the PDF.

Don’t Paste Your Boilerplate Corporate Bio into Your White Paper

If you’re planning to produce or add more white papers to your content marketing mix, look to current industry concerns and trends to spark topic ideas. But also evaluate how you will specifically address the challenges mentioned in the topic section. Customize the copy in the corporate bio area so you clearly demonstrate how you can solve these problems.

Traditional B2B marketing collateral like brochures and data sheets are viewed by many young marketers as too “old school” for today’s audiences. But not so fast. According to new research published by Eccolo Media, B2B tech buyers ranked these marketing resources as the number one content asset for evaluating a technology purchase.

The 2015 B2B Technology Content Survey was comprised of over 100 respondents who were accountable for influencing or making technology-buying decisions in the six months prior to the survey. Thirty-three percent listed themselves as influencers and 67 percent as decision-makers.

Specifically, when it came to traditional content like brochures and datasheets, the study revealed…

“More than half of respondents (57%) said they had looked at product brochures/data sheets from B2B technology vendors in the past six months, the most engagement with any content type.“

This may be a shock to marketers who deem social conversations, tweet updates, and LinkedIn connections as the undisputed top methods to influence B2B buyers. But having worked with engineers — from mechanical to software — I know many of them find valuable information in brochures and data sheets.

Decision makers and influencers in technical B2B sectors often need hard data and specifications to ensure any products they purchase are compatible or adaptable with their current systems.

You should still include benefits, even on datasheets. But for this kind of audience, I try to avoid using too many adjectives. They can come across as hyperbole, so I stick to low-key verbs. I took this approach for a client brochure selling scientific equipment for pharmaceutical, chemical and petroleum applications:

Surprising Stat for Blogs

The top five content assets among the survey respondents were…

In this age of social media, how did social content come out as a purchase influencer? Facebook and LinkedIn ranked at only 34 percent. Twitter was even less, at 25 percent. This doesn’t mean that social media has no marketing value; just that it’s not as effective as other marketing formats for purchase influence.

One stat that surprised me is blog posts. They ranked at just 30 percent, below most social content. Perhaps it’s because blogs tend to be more observational in nature, commenting on state-of-the-industry and trends rather than on product specifics.

It’s Lonely at the Bottom

I’m sure you’re curious what content channel landed last in the survey.

For least consumed content asset, we have a tie for this dubious honor: ebooks and podcasts (24%)

I bet if you asked any B2B marketing consultants about top five content formats, I doubt brochures and data sheets would make their lists.

In the end, I take away from this study that you shouldn’t be too quick to follow experts’ advice on content marketing recommendations without he or she first talking to your customers and understanding their preferred content choices. What works for one B2B sector may not necessarily work in another.

“Sharing valuable content on LinkedIn Groups is a sure-fire way to generate leads,” advise so many social media marketing experts.

I’m not convinced, especially for B2B. Oh, it may generate some leads. But after being on LinkedIn for five years or so, I can count on one hand the number of leads I’ve produced from sharing content in Groups. It does have marketing value, but I wouldn’t advise sharing content this way as your primary lead generation strategy.

Here’s why I think B2B sellers have trouble with this technique for developing leads:

Vendors outnumber decision makers in most LinkedIn Groups – This is as true in social media networking as it is with in-person networking.

Buyers don’t want to generally hang out with vendors, unless they have an imminent need for a service or product — which is rarely the case. Even within industry-specific networking events, you can find it a challenge to meet your ideal customer.

For several years, I was a member of the American Marketing Association, and I attended their events and volunteered for some of their activities. Yet, in the several years of doing these endeavors, I only ever met one member of my target market. Almost all of the AMA’s committees and members were from the vendor side of the marketing world, such as ad agencies, SEO specialists, graphic designers, and copywriters. Decision makers from the corporate side of the world, such as managers and CMOs, were almost never present.

Decision makers belong to groups that block vendors from joining. You may find a LinkedIn Group where your prospects are members. If you can join, that’s great! But some Groups gate their membership, sometimes even requiring you to complete an online application so they can weed out vendors.

Competition – Your competitors are likely using the same “post and share” technique, so the chances of your target customer seeing your post is relatively slight, especially if the Group has lots of postings on an hourly basis. You’re often at the mercy of being “at the right place and the right time.”

What I do instead…

Since joining as a premium LinkedIn member, I’ve been using my copywriting skills to carefully craft messages that I send directly via LinkedIn Mail to members of my target audience. I get a much better response from this lead generation tactic than I do from sharing content the usual way.

As mentioned earlier, it’s unlikely that the prospect has an immediate need for a vendor’s service. But that’s okay. If I get a response to my first contact message, at least I have introduced myself and started the engagement process rolling. Then I send an occasional touch base note — and this is the time and place where I share with them valuable content and resources.

Spend some time creating personalized LinkedIn messages for your prospects and see how it compares to just posting content in Groups.